The research, published in full in the journal Animal Cognition, found that this high-pitched baby talk also encouraged dogs to spend more time with their owner and increased the pup's attention span.

Previous studies on communicating with dogs suggested that using a baby voice helped improve engagement with puppies but had little impact on adult dogs. But this latest research aimed to explore the types of communication between adult animals and humans and how they affected social bonding.

Getty ImagesSally Anscombe

'A special speech register, known as infant-directed speech, is thought to aid language acquisition and improve the way a human baby bonds with an adult,' Dr Katie Slocombe from the University of York's department of psychology told HuffPost.

'This form of speech is known to share some similarities with the way in which humans talk to their pet dogs, known as dog-directed speech.'

The research team carried out a series of speech tests with 30 adult dogs. The animals were given the chance to listen to one person using dog-directed speech containing phrases such as 'you're a good dog', and then another person using adult-directed speech with no dog-related content, such as 'I am going shopping tomorrow'.

Attention and social bonding were measured during and after the speech.

The next stage involved the speakers mixing dog-directed speech with non-dog-related words and adult-directed speech with dog-related words. This was to see if the high-pitched emotional tone of the speech was more attractive to the dog than the actual words.

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'When we mixed up the two types of speech and content, the dogs showed no preference for one speaker over the other,' Alex Benjamin, a PhD student from the university's department of psychology, told HuffPost. 'This suggests that adult dogs need to hear dog-relevant words spoken in a high-pitched emotional voice in order to find it relevant.

'We hope this research will be useful for pet owners interacting with their dogs, and also for veterinary professionals and rescue workers.'